The Sheep Look Up

Many people nowadays look back on the brief burst of environmental awareness (alarm) and criticism of corporate power which occurred in the 1970's as quaint,naive, slightly ridiculous. One prior reviewer of this work refers to the "hysteria" of the period. What strikes me most strongly about _The Sheep Look Up_, billed as a 'sequel' to his big hit _Stand on Zanzibar_, is not its quaintness but its frightening accuracy. While Brunner guessed wrong on a number of counts -- for example, we haven't *quite* killed all the whales yet! -- there were trends which he read astutely and forecast correctly. In particular he forecast increasing solipsism and isolationism in American politics and cultural life; he predicted a decline in the quality of political life, to the point where the American presidency would be occupied by a semi-literate figurehead whose job is to recite comforting and irrelevant platitudes into a microphone on his way from one glamorous gig to the next. His "Prexy" character seemed like a good fit for Reagan a while back, but the current Bush (the 2nd of that name) is an even closer match. Brunner forecast the dumbing down of media, the intrusion of advertising into the most intimate spaces of daily life. He forecast the sidelining of "healthy lifestyle" products and choices into a yuppie trend (organic food becoming a boutique item) and the demonisation of environmentalists as "terrorists" and criminals. He forecast a degradation of community life, the rise of private security forces, and an increasing gap between (very) rich and (powerless) poor people. He forecast the multiplication of resistant strains of pathogens, though he did not specifically call out the abuse of antibiotics in agriculture as a prime cause. He did not foresee the consequences of synthetic estrogens; and his view of genetic engineering is by and large more positive than it would have been if he had been writing today with the legal shenanigans of Monsanto, Syngenta and their ilk in view (Brunner would have loved the story of Percy Schmeiser -- he might almost have written it himself). He forecast the ubiquitous use of tranquilizers in daily life, but he did not foresee the current fad for pathologizing ordinary behaviours (particularly in childhood) and administering psychotropics to children. The rise to enormous power of the pharmaceutical companies was not on his radar (Mike McQuay, however, took notice of that trend in his own grimly dystopian future private-eye novels). When I first read _Zanzibar_ and _Sheep_ I was just a kid. Now, almost half a lifetime later, I find that the concerns, the anger and grief and bitterness that Brunner articulated so fluently in the 1970's are far from dated. If anything, his work seems fresher and more poignant now than it did then -- I have witnessed 30 additional years of the indiscriminate damage and vandalism we call "growth" in the interim. Many things "date" Brunner's work -- in particular his thoughtless, stereotypically "Seventies" sexism, which becomes wearying to the modern reader after only a few chapters. The core issues of his work, however, have worn well; clearly it was possible as long as 30 years ago to predict many of the negative consequences of a deeply dysfunctional way of life -- overconsumption, overpopulation, concentration of power in the hands of large corporations, irresponsible use of finite resources, and so forth. His work serves as a depressing reminder that even though we may know we are heading in a wrong direction -- and even have writers able to point out the possible consequences -- and even publish those writers -- we can and do continue in happy denial towards the very dystopia that our "out there" novelists predict for us. Today our dystopian science fiction writers, notably the able satirist Bruce Sterling, paint for us possible futures resulting from a world economy destabilized by finance capital, a world climate irrevocably altered by global warming and the irresponsible release of GMOs, and so on. These possibilities will be selectively ignored, one feels, just as Brunner's predictions were ignored in his time. He was considered a raving pessimist, not to be taken seriously. Which of our prophets are we ignoring today, whom we might do better to take seriously?

Plot-wise this is a bit dated, because the book has a massive focus on pollution, which some countries are in the process of correcting. You can look at this another way, though: what if the world didn't uncover the concept of "green energy"? This is a good book in that sense. Lots of interesting thoughts and visuals. The main problem is that it's a tough read. It's disjointed with its scenes and characters, reading more like a short story collection than a true novel. There are also poems and fake commercials scattered throughout, along with ultra-short pieces (character interviews, conversations, quick events, and so on). So this is a good book to read, but I'm not sure I'd call it easy to get into. It can be enjoyable, it's just an unusual style which some people won't follow well. Lots of "slice of life" passages are peppered throughout The Sheep Look Up. Honestly this book is a bit of a slog to get through, particularly in the lengthy middle. Many parts are absolutely fascinating, though. Another downside: The Kindle edition contains a significant amount of transcription errors, such as incorrect/missing punctuation in some chapters. I hope the physical editions of this book are better-made. Would recommend this to fans of dystopian fiction, especially because it's a unique take. The Sheep Look Up doesn't have the overbearing government of 1984, the blatant censorship of Fahrenheit 451, the issues of The Handmaid's Tale, or the flawed yet pristine setting of Brave New World.

I first read this book in the 1970s, when the mid-1980s were still in the future. Brunner wrote this powerful dystopia when the Viet Nam War seemed endless, as it spilled over into other countries such as Cambodia. Further, his portrayal of a world ravaged by the wastes and by-products, though still quite pertinent, are adorably anachronistic. One of the main characters drives an electric car which, she remembers comfortably, produced only water and carbon dioxide! Brunner also took past concerns about over population and ran with it. While there are still some holdouts who believe that third world countries suffer starvation due to their birth rate and not politics, ignoring the facts that warlords requisition relief provisions for their own use - not to mention that we live in a country where there are "cookie bars" and diet food for dogs - the worry that if Americans have more than 2.5 children we are all going to die has itself died down greatly since this book was written. Yet he was dot on in many other areas. He foresaw the concept of large supermarkets selling organic food well ahead of its time. (And I hope he's wrong about his prediction of unscrupulous companies altering produce so as to give it the appearance of having been nibbled on by little critters!) He was also prescient when he portrayed the President of the United States as a celebrity refusing to take social problems seriously. For a writer who didn't live in the age of Twitter or "sound bites" it is uncanny how he captures their essence so completely. I don't want to totally spoil the book, but he amazes me further in the way he illustrates future dystopian sexist and violent culture and music. How could someone who wrote nearly half a century before hard metal and "gangsta rap" envision entertainment so similar in some ways? So, young readers, you who cannot understand old cartoons from the New Yorker about the Cold War or do not know anything about Southeast Asia, be patient with this out-if-date Classic. Even without Brunner's prophetic bulls eyes, this is still one of the best dystopian novels ever written.

I vacillated between 2 and 3 stars for this one. It gets 2 stars simply for being one of the most complete near-future dystopias of the 20th century. I eventually decided Brunner's craftsmanship nets it a third star. Frankly, beyond that there is little to recommend it. The first 20 pages set the tone so thoroughly that every event in the rest of the book is not only predictable, but feels unavoidable. In addition, there are a lot of jarring inconsistencies for a near-future, supposedly realistic setting, such as the narrator telling the reader that Europe is as poisoned as the US, but the visiting Irish character being disgusted and amazed at the conditions in the US. The book also suffers from the fashionable assumption of its time that all evil originates in industrialized nations, and that the majority of that evil comes from the US. There is also the mandatory nod to the great god of greens Ralph Nader, who is portrayed as being almost as wise as the all-seeing Austin Train. It's plodding, heavy-handed, and there are literally dozens of short stories (many collected in the Dangerous Visions anthologies) that make the same points better, with less preaching, and without the feeling that this is a political commercial dressed as a novel. If I were judging it on readability and entertainment value, rather than as an exemplar of a sub-genre, I would probably drop my rating by at least one star. I found myself wishing Brunner would just kill all of the characters and move on - there wasn't a single character in the entire book whom I wanted to see survive to the end, and most of them I would have been happy to see exit by the end of their introductory section/chapter/scene. It is the sort of book I might teach in a speculative literature course, but not one I would recommend a friend read.

Yes, there are a couple of howlers characteristic of the era (early 70's), but if you can gloss over those now politically incorrect (usually sexist) comments, the book is quite amazingly prescient. There's a corrupt president, in thrall to the corporations, a rapidly deteriorating environment (most cities require filter masks to go outside) and increasing polarization between the rich and poor. As usual, the "sheep" have become accustomed to a rapidly declining lifestyle, life expectancy, etc. Of course, rampant infectious disease and a failing health system. There's an underground environmentalist movement, and eventually, a sort of revolution. Even though the author makes a couple of nasty comments about Swedes, I'd love to recommend it to Greta T. The book is one of those in which trends are extrapolated to their logical conclusions....

Near future sci fi novel hits pretty close to real life. A portrait of extremes, the consequences of disregarding the environment and the industries that pollute, agricultural catastrophes associated with pesticides, diseases adapting to antibiotics, issues associated with the disposal of toxic waste and the consequences of inept government oversight. Brunner foresaw all of it. Only a couple of nonexistent technologies: tanks that shoot lasers to quell the crowd and a microwave oven that leaked with results that were extremely and unlikely focused. Overall a very scary fable. All of the elements of failure of the government to act before it was too late are reminiscent of many things happening today. Rich and powerful valuing profits over the long term impacts to life on the planet and towards the earth itself. The public basically accepting all of it because they lacked the education and knowledge to understand it or to research. Learned helplessness. They simply relied on the government and industry for all of their information. A willful dumbing down of society. Though Brunner is British, this novel was written about America. Honestly, the novel seems to be written with some contempt for American hubris and sensibilities. He does let all the other 1st world entities off pretty easily in comparison. Written in 1972, Brunner is an incredible observer who seems to extrapolate what was happening then to a possible conclusion some 40 years later and it is really close. Not in his prediction of events, but in his prediction of how the government, the public, other countries, the military, the media etc view things and react and respond. Nothing in this book (laser cannons aside) is that far fetched. It is consistent with a theme I have been noticing in the older books I've been reading. It's likely not that Brunner was so prescient, it's that so very little has changed over the decades. Incredible and depressing.

Knowing the year this was written and how little has been done to mitigate the problems outlined in the story, it is easy to see the U.S. facing the fate of the book. I read this over 3 weeks and had to frequently check the Wikipedia plot outline to refresh my memory on characters. I just had a hard time keeping track of the numerous characters and their affiliations. Having said that though, I would still absolutely recommend this for any reader who is appalled at the state of the world ecologically or who seriously questions the motives of capitalism. I went into this book looking for dystopian literature, my current obsession, yet found it also satisfied a questioning of our current socioeconomic, ecologic, and political status quo.

The 4 star rating here is for John Brunner's ability to extrapolate a dystopian future in this novel, published in 1972, which is alarmingly similar to our current situation. Corporate greed, government corruption, epic public health failure(s), etc. lead to an eventual breakdown in civilization. I concluded, however, that the parts are greater than the whole with this book. By that, I mean Brunner's writing style challenged me quite a bit. It took me a loooong time to finish this book, as I struggled through the discontinuity of the plot. Still, a must read for any sci-fi fan.

My children, now well into their 20's grew up with me paraphrasing John Brunner. "Sheep don't look up". This book, which I read in the 70's pushed me and helped me teach others to always question, to walk in with eyes wide open and to trust in ourselves. And to always look up. I have used this phrase so frequently in my life that even though I bought the book weeks ago, I have yet to removed the protective cover. I am savouring the memories and influence that this book has had on my life. I am waiting that special day. Thank you John.

Written in 1972, the dystopian world depicted in this book was remarkedly prescient. Readers can relate to many of the circumstances, ranging from the inability to develop effective antibiotics, to the deliberate poisoning of the environment to pursue maxi profts. While we have made a little progress in mitigating the worst aspects of predator capitalism, the ascendance to power of politicians such as Trump and his local and global equivalents threatens the survival of our world in much of the same way as depicted in the book.

THE SHEEP LOOK UP by John Brunner. A brief review. A brutal critique of the first and second world exploitation of the third world, the natural environment, and the failings and fundamental corruption of the human species as a whole. Episodic with multiple characters and parallel plots, John Brunner’s writing, infused with cliffhangers, is almost an airport novel that does not need to sensationalise. This is a mixed bag of realistic shocks. In places the writing is slightly crude and flabby, but overall the work is gigantic, ambitious and prescient. Occasionally the style ascends to an experimental and impressive level reminiscent of contemporaries, Ballard, Dick, Burroughs and Vonnegut. There may be a little artistic license needed for some of the detailed science (I’m not qualified to say, but there are plenty of historical precedents and parallels with toxins in general), but from a behavioural point of view concerning corporations, governments and collectives appears hauntingly accurate given the global incidents that have occurred since publication. And the introduction of non-native species to vulnerable areas of the world, certainly resonates with ‘actual’ events. Coming from the age of DDT, Agent Orange and the first mass awareness of our precarious position on the planet, in 1972 this was one of the great postwar works of apocalyptic Science Fiction. The novel’s lack of out and out good guys and the political hijacking of movements by multiple factions, reflects today. This work seems hardly dated in its language, but more importantly I feel, in a vastly overpopulated world, is relevant and disturbing and should be read by environmentalists and politicians alike.

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Another book I read years ago......it's lost some of the impact it had for back then (when it looked like we might be headed down the path Brunner laid out), but still a good read and a cautionary tale for today's environmental concerns.